Clara Vance saw the bottle tumbling through the air.
It was spinning end over end, flashing red and brass against the dark industrial rafters.
The heat inside the thick glass was so intense that the air around it wobbled like water on a hot stove.
She could hear the chemical reaction churning inside it from thirty paces away.
It sounded like a hornet’s nest trapped in a tea kettle: a high, thin screech of boiling nitric acid eating into molten antimony.
“Clara! Move!” Julian’s voice cracked across the room.
He was running toward her, throwing himself across the composing table.
Elena was shouting, reaching for her trauma shears.
